Tribune Editorial: Shift to natural gas is right, but city must go further

Sunday

Dec 15, 2013 at 12:09 AM

One of the better articles the Tribune staff has produced in recent years appears on today’s front page, and if you skipped it on your way to this page, please go back immediately and read it through.

One of the better articles the Tribune staff has produced in recent years appears on today’s front page, and if you skipped it on your way to this page, please go back immediately and read it through.

The article by Gavin Aronsen thoroughly explains what is happening with the Ames power plant. In the process, it identifies what the city is doing right and what the city ought to be working toward in the future.

New Environmental Protection Agency rules are requiring coal-powered plants to make expensive upgrades to reduce toxic emissions. In the case of the Ames plant, the price tag for the upgrades would be $71 million.

Rather than spend that kind of money to maintain a plant that contributes to global warming, the city has wisely decided to convert the plant to natural gas. It’s not a cheap process at $53 million, but there are two clear benefits: It’s better for the environment, and natural gas is likely to be a cheaper fuel in the long run.

The latter benefit is the result of new technology — hydraulic fracturing — that has allowed U.S. companies to tap into natural gas reserves that we couldn’t get to before. It’s simple: More supply, lower prices.

The city’s move to natural gas has received wide support in the community, as it should, but much of that support has come with a condition: Recognize that natural gas is not a permanent solution.

Environmentally, natural gas is better than coal, but it remains a nonrenewable resource and it still emits air pollution. According to the EPA, natural gas emits about half as much carbon dioxide as coal and a third as much nitrogen oxides. That’s good, but it’s still contributing to dirty air and the warming climate.

So, the city has done the right thing for now, economically and environmentally. But local environmentalists are right to call on city leaders to adopt a more aggressive approach to expanding the use of renewable energies to power Ames homes and businesses.

As we have expressed multiple times in this space, Ames has a long tradition of civic progress and innovation. From burning trash for power to maintaining one of the best small bus systems in the country, Ames has often been well ahead of the curve.

And that is where the city should be on renewable energy today. As the home of Iowa State University, internationally known and respected for educating generations of scientists and engineers, Ames should be setting examples for others to follow. Yet local environmental advocate Erv Klaas assesses the city thus: "Ames is not a leader, it’s a follower."

Ames has taken some modest steps in making wind power a larger contributor to the city’s energy supply. But the city can do much more in the area of energy conservation, and it can make the use of renewable energies a higher priority.

Thankfully, Ames is not a hotbed of climate change deniers who foul up the local dialogue. But for those few who perhaps retain some doubt as to mankind’s impact on global warming, please note that the international scientists who make up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently issued a report that should close the book on this question once and for all.

Further, the report says climate change is no longer something to be feared in some far-off future: "It is extremely likely that human influence on climate caused more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010. There is high confidence that this has warmed the ocean, melted the snow and ice, raised global mean sea level and changed some climate extremes in the second half of the 20th century."

Our greatest foe in the 21st century is carbon pollution. And while we don’t seem to know how to successfully confront, say, terrorism, we know very well what to do about human-influenced climate warming. We just need the will to do it.